Chamber and committees

I thank the First Minister for advance sight of his statement, and I welcome the formal apology that he has made to Scotland’s Gypsy and Traveller communities.

The Government is right to acknowledge that, although they occurred before the Parliament was established, the Scottish state and its public institutions should recognise the wrongs that were visited on Gypsy and Traveller communities. The tinker experiment was wrong and should never have happened. It exposed some of our most marginalised communities to cultural injustice, prejudice and failure. Although that occurred many decades ago, it is clear that it has had a lasting effect. On behalf of the Scottish Labour Party, I add our apology to that of the First Minister.

We have heard that it has taken a long time to reach this day. Once again, it is important that we pay tribute to all the individuals in the Gypsy Traveller community who have spoken out and have had to relive injustices in order to get the recognition and the apology that they deserve. It is also important to put on record the work not just of Christina McKelvie, about which I accord myself with the comments of the First Minister, but of all the other organisations in Scotland, particularly the Scottish Human Rights Commission under the stewardship of Professor Angela O’Hagan and others, that continue to work on these issues.

In response to Alexander Stewart, the First Minister acknowledged, once again, that this is the beginning of a conversation and a process, but I do not think that he said in definitive terms whether there will be consideration of a redress scheme. Is he able to say anything further on that? If not, is he able to say why that is and whether he thinks that redress in the form of compensation would be appropriate?

Cashback for communities does, indeed, do great work and, clearly, youth work is part of the response. However, I have spoken with a number of youth groups in my community, including Johnstone Castle Learning Centre, which is locked out of that funding because its income is under £200,000. Most youth groups that we represent in our communities will not have an income of £200,000. What does the minister suggest that they should do to ensure that their life-saving work continues?

Before Meghan Gallacher moves on to talk about childcare, can she say whether she recognises the importance of neonatal services for women and, in particular, the issues that we have debated on the Government’s downgrading of the neonatal service at University hospital Wishaw, which is of serious concern to a number of Lanarkshire members in the chamber, not least my colleague Davy Russell, the member for Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse? Does she recognise the importance of that to women?

I am pleased to be able to speak in this debate. Like colleagues across the chamber, I welcome the publication of the annual statement, which finally delivers on the recommendation that Scottish ministers deliver an annual statement on gender policy coherence. As we have heard, that was first suggested by the National Advisory Council on Women and Girls in 2019. It has taken the time since then for the annual statement to be brought to fruition. I appreciate that we have had challenges in the intervening period—not least Covid—but we should reflect on the amount of time that it sometimes takes to prepare reports and then decide how we will implement the actions. Members across the chamber have reflected on the fact that having reports is all well and good but that taking action is really important.

Whatever the internal processes and challenges have been in collating the information that was needed to deliver an annual statement, there is now an opportunity for us all to take cognisance of it, reflect on it and decide how to move forward in relation to both the Government’s actions and the actions that Parliament can take through scrutiny. This debate will be important in that regard, but it is important that we come together annually to reflect on what progress is and is not being made.

There are similar opportunities in the parliamentary calendar to reflect on and debate issues that are relevant to supporting women and girls in Scottish society. Every year, we have many important opportunities for debate, such as on the annual 16 days of activism on gender-based violence. I have reflected, as have colleagues, that those debates cannot just take place at that time, or during those 16 days in the case of that example. We need year-round scrutiny and interrogation to ensure that we do not miss those important issues in the day-to-day work of the Parliament.

The point has been made already, but I agree that it is crucial that men—those who are in the chamber and other male colleagues in the Parliament—are involved in that scrutiny. It is always the case that too few men take part in these debates. I always try to say that it is very important that we reflect on our actions and behaviours. We must also reflect on how we are bringing up a new generation of boys and young men and informing their attitudes towards and understanding of women. We must reflect on whether we are giving them the right support to be the best men that they can be and to respect and understand what is acceptable behaviour towards women and girls. Many of those issues have already been explored very eloquently in the debate.

We need to take robust action to push back on toxic influences, toxic figures online and the drip-feeding of outdated and harmful views towards women, which has arguably set back our debates quite some way. We have to push harder to look at potential new ways to target those narratives, particularly online. I pay tribute to everyone, particularly the women in the chamber, who continue to work collaboratively to do that and to raise those issues and ensure that they do not disappear from our discourse.

I will reflect on the work that is being done in committees in the Parliament, which is very important. A lot of good, high-quality work can be done in committees, not least in the Equality, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee—some members of the committee are in the chamber for the debate—but also the Social Justice and Social Security Committee, which is concluding its report on the impact of finances on women who are leaving a domestically abusive relationship. Its forthcoming report will be important, because the evidence that we heard in the committee’s inquiry was stark and concerning. A lot of tangible action could make a real difference in how we support women to leave a financially abusive relationship, to get the right support and, fundamentally, to get on to the right footing and have the right financial support to move on with their lives.

There is a huge amount of work for us all to do, but I am particularly cognisant of the role that men play in understanding the issues, moving forward and supporting the women in the chamber and beyond in Scotland so that we can all move forward together for equality.

I have, like other colleagues who have raised this issue, seen these kinds of incidents in my region. As the cabinet secretary knows, we had a recent incident of damage and vandalism at the united services club in Barrhead. The last social club in the town, it is run by older volunteers, and the incident was very distressing for them.

I heard what the minister said, but the Government has now had a number of summits. We need to know when the funding will come to support local authorities, community organisations and, crucially, the police in taking a focused and holistic view of the issue and to enable us to get the solutions that we need for communities.

I thank the cabinet secretary for the advance sight of her statement, both at the usual time and in her morning press exclusives.

There has been a lot of spin and, in the statement, there is a myriad of excuses, but the reality is that there is also failure. For all the rhetoric that we have had from the First Minister and the cabinet secretary, after the Scottish National Party’s 18 years in office, relative child poverty, after housing costs, has fallen by only 1 per cent. When the cabinet secretary says that rates are “broadly ... stable”, what she really means is that the dial has not shifted.

On the two-child limit, over the history of that policy, Scottish Labour has been consistently clear that we want it to be scrapped, but the haphazard and last-minute decision to include its mitigation in the budget makes a mockery of the claim that the cabinet secretary made over many years that she was powerless to do anything about it. I note the letter that has been issued before we meet her this afternoon, which outlines that applications will be open but does not say when payments will be made. It also talks about using Scottish child payment data—the cabinet secretary was not willing to admit to that in the past.

On the wider picture facing Scotland’s young people and the root causes of child poverty, responsibility for failing to meet the targets lies with the Scottish Government. It is the SNP that failed to deliver on its commitments to expand free school meals; it is the SNP that stripped employability services to the bone; and it is the SNP that created a housing emergency, with 10,000 children in temporary accommodation. Is it not the truth that more of the same will not deliver the 2030 targets and that the SNP Government is out of ideas and out of time to meaningfully reduce child poverty?

On Saturday we received the sad news of the passing of Councillor Betty Cunningham, a former provost of East Renfrewshire, who was known to many members on all sides of the chamber and who was described as a “force of nature”. Among her many achievements, Betty was responsible for setting up an international trust after visiting Kaponda in Malawi in 2007. The trust has supported the provision of education, healthcare, and agricultural skills and opportunities, as well as taking hundreds of young people on cultural exchanges to Malawi.

One of the key areas of interest there is oral health. Can the cabinet secretary say how the Government is partnering with charitable organisations such as the Betty Cunningham International Trust on projects such as MalDent? Does he agree that continuing such partnerships is a fitting legacy for people such as Betty, who had such a love for and connection with Malawi?

I add my thanks to Michelle Thomson for lodging the motion and opening the debate; I recognise the way that we have engaged across parties in the chamber to ensure that the debate could take place today. I also pay tribute to the excellent work of Beyond Srebrenica Scotland and to its chair, Sabina Kadic-Mackenzie, for all her efforts in ensuring that we protect the memory of Srebrenica and educate people about what happened there 30 years ago.

To that end, I urge colleagues to join the events in Parliament today. There will be a drop-in in the Fleming room, where some of the young people whom Karen Adam referenced will talk to members, and a photograph will be taken outside at quarter past 2. I hope that colleagues will be able to join us in those endeavours.

Like Michelle Thomson, I was honoured to take part in the delegation to Bosnia and Herzegovina in March, along with minister Siobhian Brown and many others from across public life in Scotland. It was one of the most profound things that I have done as an MSP and, as Michelle Thomson referenced, a great opportunity to understand and encounter people who lived through those horrendous experiences 30 years ago.

When I was in that delegation, each evening I tried to write something to capture my thoughts and experiences. In the speaking time that I have, I will read to colleagues one of the reflections that I wrote on the day that we came back from Srebrenica:

The sun is slowly dipping below the hill. There has been some warmth today and all around are hints of spring, but as evening falls there is a chill that seems to reach down to us from the mountains. Nzad has just finished speaking to us. He is framed by row upon row of white gravestones. He survived a mass execution as a child and walked with bullet wounds to his head and stomach for days to reach safety. He is a softly spoken man. He speaks calmly and generously answers our questions. He speaks about his daughters, who just yesterday played with Bosnian Serb girls in the local volleyball team.

Despite the horrors done to him and to those he loved, he wants a better future for his children. A silent reverence lingers before we rise to walk one last time in the fading light around the thousands of graves, touching the names etched into the grey stone on the Srebrenica genocide memorial—each a son, a father, a brother, a husband.

There is something incomprehensible here—something that makes me want to stay longer, to try to understand, to cry out, to do something, although nothing seems to meet the enormity. The journey here reminded us of the fragility of the peace agreement and the prevalence of denial of the genocide in the Republika Srpska. In each service station and each town, there would be people who had turned on their neighbours, people who had stayed silent in the face of what was happening, and people who even carried out those unspeakable acts. They are walking these roads, sipping coffee, watching our bus pass.

We visited the memorial centre at the battery factory, which was the Dutch UN base at Potocari, and we retraced the footsteps of those days in July 1995. We were all rendered speechless by video footage of what happened after the UN allowed the Bosnian Serb forces to separate boys and men from women and girls. Promises of safe passage to free Bosnian territory were a lie.

In the video, filmed by their executioners, we watched six men shot dead. The two youngest were spared until they had dragged the four bodies of their comrades into a shallow grave. There are no words. We all reach out to each other without speaking as we climb the stairs to meet the directors of the centre.

Before we left, we met Mother Fadala. She speaks to us at her shop, selling flowers, books and memorial items. Like all the mothers, she lost everything. The shop is her defiance, her reason to go on. The authorities of the Republika Srpska do not want her here, but this unassuming, smiling small lady in her 80s is a rock, unmovable, strong. She tells us that soon she will travel to the United Nations in New York to call for the international community not to forget and to do more. This is what the mothers do. They stand because others cannot.

In the darkness of our journey back to Sarajevo, there is much to process. I think of the sun setting on those rows and rows of white stones and the words that are written in the books held in common by the Abrahamic faith. What have you done? Listen—your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground.

The minister discussed the Law Society’s view and the exchange of letters that happened yesterday. She mentioned unintended consequences a number of times, but it is not clear from my discussions with the Law Society what those would be. It is concerned that it does not have clarity on what the minister has referred to. Indeed, it is keen that we take what I have described as a belt-and-braces approach by putting the issue at the forefront of the bill.

Although I intend still to move forward in that regard, I understand and respect what the minister said about her revision to the explanatory notes and her willingness to accept the Law Society’s wording on the issue, which will go some way to finding the compromise that we are looking for. However, given the significant concerns that have been raised by the Law Society in its correspondence, I will press amendment 117.

I am pleased to speak in the debate on behalf of Scottish Labour and confirm that we will support the bill at decision time this evening.

As we have heard already in contributions, the process has been long for all involved—not merely this afternoon, although I appreciate that for colleagues it might have felt like two years when, in fact, it has been only two hours. We have been at the bill for two years, and it has been more than a decade since some stakeholders who have been calling for reform of the regulatory system began working for it. On that point, I thank all the organisations and individuals who have engaged on the bill, not least the Law Society of Scotland, the Faculty of Advocates, the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission and many others, including people who have experience of complaints against solicitors in Scotland. Their time and efforts have certainly moved the bill into a much better place than where it started.

It would be remiss of me not to reflect on why the bill has taken so long to come to its conclusion. As we have heard, the bill was controversial when it was introduced, as the Scottish Government attempted to take control of legal services regulation through ministerial powers. Such was the significance of the threat to the independence of the judiciary and the legal profession, which is a fundamental tenet of a well-functioning democracy, the senior judiciary was left in the unprecedented position of speaking out on the proposals. It might be the first time in the Parliament’s history that the senior senators of the College of Justice have come to give evidence on a piece of legislation that directly related to their functions and the function of legal services in Scotland.

I am sure that many, in and outwith the chamber, were baffled that a policy could be formed and a bill introduced that so fundamentally threatened the profession’s independence, when there were no calls or recommendations for such a position to be taken.

I recognise that the minister listened to the depth and breadth of concern about the proposals and lodged significant amendments at stage 2 to reverse that position. However, I think that serious learning remains to be done by the Government about how it took that position in the first place.

I pay tribute, though, to the minister. She came into office part way through the bill process and inherited the bill in the condition that it was in. She has sought to listen and engage and has been constructive and co-operative through the stages of the bill—certainly with me. I genuinely appreciate her time and engagement and that of her officials and the wider bill team.

I continue to have some concerns about the stage 3 consideration process that we have just completed. The fact that an issue as significant as the status of registered foreign lawyers and multinational practices was left to the final day of the bill’s passage to be resolved is quite concerning and shocking. We are talking about the ability of some of the biggest law firms in the United Kingdom to operate in Scotland and about—as I said in my remarks on the amendments—thousands of jobs and tens of thousands of clients. The Law Society and others have been highlighting those issues for the two years since the bill was introduced. It is my understanding that, although the Law Society is the regulator and the body responsible for administering the legislation, there have not been detailed discussions with it on those matters preceding the correspondence that was issued last night, which I referred to earlier.

I believe that, ultimately, over the course of stages 2 and 3, the bill has been brought to a better place. It will provide tangible improvements to the legal system and legal services and much-needed additional protections to consumers and the public.

I am disappointed that the Conservatives will not join us in supporting the bill this evening, although I appreciate that they are speaking of their concerns about what it means for consumers. I point out to Tess White and others that an independent regulator is not being widely called for by people involved in the process, particularly the Faculty of Advocates, which I referred to earlier, but also the Law Society and others. If an independent regulator were answerable to the Lord President, I do not think that it would be an independent regulator. There is a challenge in the position that the Conservatives have arrived at. I believe that their previous position was to support the tenets of the bill and not to support an independent regulator.

I welcome the powers that I have worked on with the minister that have now been included in the bill. I highlight to the minister, however, that amendment 42 not passing and the related subsequent or previous amendments passing might cause some challenges in the legislation. It would be useful if, in a return to Parliament or in her summing up, she clarified how she intends to take that forward, given that it will be a challenge in the statute book. The post-legislative scrutiny would be a helpful vehicle to seek to deal with those issues. We need to understand what issues will remain in that space, and I hope that she will use the post-legislative scrutiny to do that.

I think that the bill will provide major, overdue regulatory changes for the benefit of consumers and practitioners alike. It will simplify a system that is too complex and will make proactive a system that is too reactive. Consequently, we will support the bill, as amended, this evening.